update

she just wet her pants. on my rug. :(

but here are some pics of Mari and Elena holding our neighbor's puppies. My computer let me load the pictures on, but not the video. I'll have to keep working on that. Enjoy.....





and because I can't post pics of them without putting up all my beautiful girls, here are random ones of Amya and Tea - Amya with a lego creation and Tea putting her new diego ornament on the tree.

training woes.....

so, I think Amya might be claustrophobic. We have this big box that the girls are using to play house with. It was Amya's turn to go in and she went in with the baby. Elena and Tea were outside and they closed up the sides. All of a sudden we hear Amya SCREAMING "I have to get out! Let me out! Please, I have to get out!" and she was kicking the box. The girls quickly let her out and she came over to me and started crying. I asked her what had happened and she said she got so hot and she couldn't breathe and she just knew she had to get out of there. I felt so bad for her. It took about 5 minutes for her to calm down. She's playing with them again now, but she's being very adamant about them not closing the box on her. Poor little girl.

Here's a Tea funny. I came home today and Keith had Tea in some und*es. I told her to make sure she told me if she had to go, and then let her play. I go in the bathroom a little later and there's a nice little puddle on the bathroom floor. At least she made it to the bathroom, right? Anyway, I'm making her use the p*tty and I tell her I'm a little mad at her. She says "You mad at me Mommy? You mad at me? I not mad at you. Why you mad at me?" I had to laugh. And she's been dry since then. I can't believe she's not trained yet. I'm totally slacking. Amya was trained well before she was three and we started with Elena way before she turned three. We're still having some problems here and there, but she's done for the most part. And here Tea's turning three on Monday and we haven't even tried to get her going. Maybe since we waited longer she'll train faster? I don't know. I guess we've started though. It's so annoying to do the whole p*tty training thing. Sometimes I'd almost rather just change diapers than clean up puddles all day long. Hopefully hers will go smoother than Elena's. Amya really spoiled us.

I'm gonna try to see if I can hook my camera up to this laptop and get some pictures up. And also some cute video of Maricela holding a puppy. Maybe I'll be back later.

november desktop

I was going to put this up with the last batch of pictures and forgot. So in case you were wondering, this is what my November desktop looks like. Mom, if you want to put it on your computer, just tell me and I'll email it to you. Hope you like it!

more pictures

Here are some more pictures of the girls. We raked up all the leaves in the backyard and the girls had a blast playing in them!












And here's a picture from Halloween. We didn't really do much this year. The girls just picked costumes out of our costume box and we went to the mall to trick-or-treat. We took their two friends from next door with us. As you can see, Elena is wearing the Jessie hat (from Toy Story) with a princess dress and a gun. She was Princess Jessie. :)


Amya had backwards day at her school and came up with this whole outfit by herself. I was only going to put her hair in a side ponytail and then she said "Wait! Do my bangs on the other side!"So we did that, she wore her shirt and pants backwards, she has on my socks, and two different shoes. She really had a lot of fun with it.


And here's Maricela in her pretty birthday dress from my mom, when she was barely starting to walk.

pictures

here's a link to my flickr pictures. I put up pictures from disney, sea world, and the beach. Let me know if you have any problems viewing them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/raisingmygirls/sets/72157602914048593/

my eyes hurt

Well, I finally came upstairs and loaded the pictures onto the computer. But since my eyes are hurting and it's after 11, I think I'll wait till tomorrow to upload them here. And there are so many I want to share - I might have to put them on Flickr.

When I was typing the title, I remembered an Amya story I wanted to share. We went to the church the other night for a Family Home Evening type activity. They were telling the story that goes along with the "I'll Find You My Friend" song. It talks about how there were two friends in the pre-existence, and they both find out it's their time to come to Earth, and one is going to an LDS home and the other isn't and the one who isn't asks the other friend to come find him and share the gospel with him after they get there. Anyway, they're telling this story and then they start singing the song, and Amya leans over to me. She says "Mom, my eyes hurt and I feel like crying, but I don't have to." I asked her if her bangs were bothering her eyes and she said no. I asked if she liked what they were talking about and she said no. I asked her if she was feeling the Holy Ghost and that's why she was crying and she said she didn't think so. I told her it was okay for her to cry, it just meant she liked what they were saying and she buried her head in Keith's back and cried a little. It was so touching to me. I know she felt the Spirit (cause I was pretty close to crying myself) and just didn't know how to express it. I don't even know how to say what I'm trying to say, but I just thought it was such a sweet moment and I hope that she'll remember it.

And one other funny thing. Keith was talking about someone the other day and said "Yeah, he's crazy." Téa immediately asked "Crazy? Fox crazy?" Keith likes to say crazy like a fox and she had remembered that. Keith said he busted up laughing when she said that.

Okay, hopefully I'll either have pictures up tomorrow, or a link to my Flickr account with lots of pictures.

sorry mom

still no pictures. I just can't get my lazy butt up the stairs to load them onto the computer. This wireless on my laptop is totally spoiling me. But here are some updates sin fotos (that's spanish for without pictures).

Maricela folds her arms to say the prayer. Every time. And the other night Keith said "Hey you know what you can do to calm her down when she's going crazy?" He started saying a prayer and she immediately turned around, folded her arms and smiled. SO cute. She waves bye, has 12 teeth, walks and gets into everything everywhere, and is just turning into the cutest little person ever.

Elena can write her own name!!!! And guess who taught her - Amya! Amya absolutely loves to play school with the girls. She has rules and makes 'plans' and everything. We got a little annoyed with her the other day because she glued a class schedule she had made to the wall. Nice. Anyway, back to Elena. Amya was making her practice the letters in her name. She totally got the E and the L and then just needed a little more help from me to get the N and the A. But now she's writing it all by herself and is so smart! She's so proud of herself and keeps asking us if we want to watch her write her name again.

Amya and Elena both know their parts for the Primary presentation. Elena's is "Tengo fe en el Senor Jesucristo". And Amya's is "Yo tambien soy una hija de Dios. Mi padre celestial tiene un plan para mi". Elena is so cute - she'll say "Mom do you want me to say my prayer?" and then say her little part.

Did I already tell you about all the coloring Téa is doing? I think I did. But I just can't get over it. She's constantly coloring (even on our walls) and today she wanted to write her name like Elena was. I helped her write it, and then she tried to do it again by herself. She didn't do too bad for her first try! And then she drew a picture of herself next to her name - a cute little potato with hair and sticks for arms. It's so neat to watch these girls go through the same stages of writing and drawing that we saw with Amya. It's just really interesting to me to have learned all this stuff about how kids learn and when they start to do things like read and write and how they go through these different phases, and then to watch my kids do those things I learned about. (Sorry for that annoying run-on sentence.)

Well, maybe if I get enough sleep tonight, I'll have enough energy to go upstairs tomorrow and get some pictures posted. Don't cross your fingers though. :) TTFN!